Jack Ma: The future has come

Chapter 2 Globalization in the 21st Century (1)
1. The next 30 years
Twenty-one years ago, in 21, when I first started my business, there were probably fewer than 1995 Internet users and fewer than 5 Internet practitioners worldwide.But today, nearly 5 people attended the Yunqi Conference.Today, the number of people using the Internet in the world has exceeded 5 billion. The changes in the past 20 years have shocked the whole world. Twenty years ago, when I was chatting with my friends by the West Lake, I said that a new world will be born in the future, and this world will be called the virtual world.There will be a new continent in this world; in this world, everyone will be connected on the Internet.Today, a new world is really born - a new economy, a new basis for the development of a powerful world economy with more than 21 billion people.

People have been asking me recently, do Internet companies have boundaries?Alibaba seems to be everywhere, Tencent seems to be everywhere, and so does Facebook. Do you Internet companies have boundaries?My answer is that the Internet has no boundaries, just like electricity has no boundaries. More than 100 years ago, you would not say that this industry can use electricity, and that industry cannot use electricity. Electricity has no application boundaries.The Internet is a platform and a technology; from a certain perspective, it can also be said to be an idea and a future.

Some people say that the Internet economy or e-commerce is a virtual economy. I think it is not only a virtual economy, but also a future economy.Many people say that "the Internet is impacting all walks of life" and "e-commerce has impacted, impacted or destroyed traditional businesses".In my opinion, e-commerce has not impacted traditional commerce, nor has it hit traditional commerce. E-commerce has only grasped the technology and ideas of the Internet, and the future economy will be entirely based on the Internet.We have grasped the technology of the Internet and created a future-adapting business model on it, that is, e-commerce.

What really impacts traditional industries and employment is our thinking yesterday, our ignorance of the future, and our fear of the future.So, I don't think each of us has anything to worry about today, what I really worry about is our dependence on yesterday.The changes in the world are far beyond everyone's imagination. The next 30 years will be the 30 years when human society will be turned upside down.

At present, from the government to all walks of life to enterprises, there are still some people who do not realize the impact this technological revolution will bring to mankind.A lot of things that we used to think were normal, a lot of things that we did very well yesterday, a lot of things that we used to think were the best job opportunities, will be disrupted and changed.Human beings will usher in and create many new job opportunities while losing many traditional job opportunities.

Accompanying and promoting the first technological revolution and the second technological revolution were the two world wars, the emancipation of human thought, and the development of human wisdom.So, if there is a third world war, what kind of technological revolution will accompany it?The new technological revolution should solve the problems of poverty and disease, the environment and sustainable development.

On October 2016, 10, I attended the ACD (Asian Cooperation Dialogue) Leaders' Meeting in Thailand. Heads of state from 10 Asian countries and regions attended the meeting.At the meeting, I called on countries to develop unique policies for the next 34 years.Now every country is innovating for its own young people and for its own future, such as German Industry 30, Made in China 4.0, and Thailand's National Plan.The competition in the future world is the competition of innovation and the competition of young people. In the future, the Internet world will become bigger and bigger.

We need to inject innovative genes and DNA into this world, only in this way can we have a future.

So I want to say that in the next 30 years, everyone will have a chance. Governments of all countries should formulate innovative development policies for the next 30 years, formulate unique policies for young people under the age of 30 in their own countries, and provide opportunities for small businesses with less than 30 employees. Create unique policies.

In the past few decades, the policies of governments around the world have been formulated for large companies. If we can actually formulate policies for small businesses, then there will be more and more opportunities for small businesses and young people.In the past, entrepreneurship may require money, resources, and various relationships; in the future, as long as technology, data, and innovation are used, everyone will have opportunities.In the past, the purpose of the development of large enterprises was to obtain more profits and obtain more resources; in the future, if large enterprises want to do better, they must assume social responsibilities, and must build infrastructure and provide resources for countless people to start businesses.Many large companies have talked about ecological resources the most in recent years. The concept of ecological resources I have heard in their minds is that they hope to use ecological resources to make themselves stronger and stronger; and I think that the responsibility of large companies in the future It is to build a suitable ecological environment and help other companies in this ecological circle to live better.Only when this ecological environment is better can large enterprises live better.

Therefore, I say that it is not modern technology that impacts you, but traditional thinking, conservative thinking, and yesterday's concepts impact you; it is not e-commerce that impacts traditional business, but your ignorance of the future impacts your business.

E-commerce
Everyone knows that Alibaba is an e-commerce company. In fact, the most traditional part of Alibaba's business is called e-commerce. The word "e-commerce" may soon be out.Starting next year, Alibaba will no longer mention e-commerce, because e-commerce is just a ferry boat, and its connotation is to transport goods and information from one end of the river to the other end.In the future, we will advocate the "Five New", and the development of the "Five New" will profoundly affect China, the world, and everyone in the future.

Why do I say pure e-commerce is a traditional concept? More than 20 years ago, when we started doing the Internet, we didn’t do Taobao, Tmall, and Alipay from the very beginning. We didn’t realize until 2003 that we could develop our business only by building such infrastructure platforms; in 2004, We're just starting to realize that what we're doing is going to make a huge difference in business in the future, and maybe if we keep doing this, finance will change dramatically as well.So in 2003 and 2004, I gave at least 200 speeches across the country, communicating with countless companies about new business models in the future.My point is that the new e-commerce will change many business forms.I believe that most companies did not take it seriously at that time.

But today, new e-commerce based on big data and cloud computing has developed, and the era of pure e-commerce will soon end.In the next 10 or 20 years, there will be no such term as e-commerce, but only the term "new retail", which means that online and offline and logistics must be combined to create a new retail model.Offline enterprises must go online, and online enterprises must go offline, combining online and offline with modern logistics.The essence of a logistics company is no longer who can do it faster than anyone else, but to make logistics management better and reduce the inventory of the enterprise to zero.This is the essence of logistics.

"Five New"

The first "new" of the "five new" is "new retail".In modern cities, the reason why many traditional retail companies have been greatly impacted by e-commerce or the Internet is because they have not grasped the technology of the future; they have not seen the future, but only seen yesterday; they have not learned how to apply new technologies ; How to cooperate with Internet companies, how to cooperate with modern logistics, how to make good use of big data!To create new retail, the original retail industry based on the real estate model will definitely be impacted; even if it is not impacted today, they will not live for too long.

The second "new" is "newly made".In the past 30 to 30 years, manufacturing has emphasized scale and standardization; in the next 2 years, manufacturing has emphasized intelligence, personalization, and customization.Any manufacturing industry will be destroyed if it does not start with personalization and customization.Therefore, the second great revolution after the retail revolution is the IOT (Internet of Things) revolution, which is the birth of so-called artificial intelligence and smart machines.The machines of the future will not use electricity, but data.Due to changes in the retail industry, the original B2C manufacturing model will completely move to C[-]B, that is, on-demand customization.The supply-side reform we are talking about today is to reform ourselves to adapt to the market and to adapt to consumers.The birth of new manufacturing will have an impact on some industries that emphasize scale and standardization in the Yangtze River Delta region and the Pearl River Delta region, which will far exceed everyone's imagination.

The third "new" is "new finance".The birth of new finance will accelerate the transformation of the entire society.The financial system in the past 200 years has supported the development of the industrial economy. In the past 200 years, it has been the "20 theory", that is, as long as 80% of large enterprises are supported, 80% of small and medium-sized enterprises can be stimulated to develop.The new finance in the future must be based on the "80 Theory", that is, to support [-]% of small and medium-sized enterprises, personalized enterprises, and support young people and consumers.In the past, we had the idea of ​​solving [-]% of the difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises, innovative entrepreneurs, and consumers, but the IT infrastructure at that time did not allow us to do so.

We want to create a fairer, more transparent environment and support the 80% who were not supported yesterday.I hope to see the birth of real Internet finance and create a real credit system, and this data-based credit system will produce real inclusive finance all over the world.Therefore, the birth of new finance will inevitably have a certain impact and influence on the financial institutions of yesterday, and will also bring benefits to all entrepreneurs, young people, and small businesses.I believe that in the next 10 years, the financial system will definitely develop tremendously, which is also the responsibility of Ant Financial.We hope to turn credit into wealth. We hope that everyone who wants to start a business and has a reasonable business plan can get financial support, and a fair, transparent, and open inclusive financial system will truly emerge.

The fourth "new" is "new technology".After the emergence of the mobile Internet, perhaps the original PC chip will become a mobile chip, and the operating system will also be mobile; the original machine manufacturing will become artificial intelligence.In the future, new technologies based on the Internet and big data will emerge endlessly, which will create endless imagination space for human beings.

The fifth "new" is "new energy".In the past, human development was based on oil and coal. In the future, human development will be based on new energy, and data will rank first among all new energy.According to Dr. Wang Jian [2], data is the first energy and resource created by human beings.This kind of energy and resources is fundamentally different from the concept in our common sense. Clothes are worn by others, and you wear them again, and they are worthless; while data is used by different people, you will get completely different results. Data is reusable. , reorganization, benefit expansion and extensibility, that is, the role and benefit of data will not decay.

New retail, new manufacturing, new finance, new technology, and new energy, these "five new" will impact many industries, and even have a huge destructive impact.I hope that everyone will not take this as an alarmist warning, but as an opportunity to change themselves.From now on, if you grasp it, you will win, if you refuse, you will perish!
I hope that the government will consider changing the traditional "five links and one leveling" [3] into the new "five links and one leveling" when attracting investment in the future.The new "five links" refer to new retail, new manufacturing, new finance, new technology and new energy, and "one leveling" refers to providing a fair environment for entrepreneurship and competition.The traditional "five connections and one leveling" is based on tax policy and land policy, which I think is unfair.The changes in the future are far beyond our imagination. In the past, the technological revolution was basically driven by knowledge. I think the changes in the future will not only be driven by knowledge, but also by wisdom and data.

In the past, machines were tools for human beings, and in the future, machines will be partners of human beings

In the past 100 years, human eyes have been looking outward, so we have seen the moon and Mars.In the next 30 years, human beings must learn to look inward while exploring outward.Only when human beings learn to look inward can they truly understand what they don't want.In the past 100 years, human beings have known what they want; in the next 100 years, human beings must know what they don't want.Only when you know what you don't want, will you know what you must insist on.

I hope that everyone will grasp the trend of the whole world in the future, from knowledge-driven to wisdom-driven, from the original scale-driven and standardization-driven to customization-driven.In the past 20 or 30 years of development, we have turned people into machines to a certain extent; in the next 20 or 30 years, we will turn machines into "people."In the past 200 years, humans have created trains, airplanes, and spaceships, and the speed of humans cannot match them; today, humans have created computers, and the computing speed and efficiency of computers are unmatched, because computers will not be tired, have no emotions, and will not Will lose his temper, and will not be passive and sabotage.Under the set program, it is always running.

Although computers will become smarter and smarter, it is impossible for them to rule over human beings.In the past, machines were tools for humans, and in the future machines will be partners of humans.We must learn to work with machines, and we must understand that machines cannot have intelligence, machines cannot have will, machines cannot have values, and machines cannot have a good cultural system.

The world has changed far beyond our imagination, and this change requires us to transform the original education system.At present, our universities only impart knowledge. I think "teaching, education, learning, and learning" are different concepts. Teaching is imparting knowledge, education is imparting culture, learning is knowledge, and learning is wisdom.

I hope that our universities will pay more attention to the cultivation of students' creativity and imagination in the future. If it is just to teach knowledge, I believe that the challenges faced by college students in the future will become greater and greater.Because after the 21st century, the core words are innovation, imagination and change.

When machines are smarter than you, don’t be discouraged. What makes us stronger than machines lies in our grasp of culture and thinking about visions. Imagination is where the greatest opportunities for human beings lie.

The future is not scary, as long as you grasp it.Fear comes from ignorance of the future.Someone told me a very interesting topic, saying that Hawking said that human beings should never communicate with aliens, because it is very scary, once they communicate with aliens, what will happen... This reminds me Seeing that many people think e-commerce and Internet big data are terrible, do we still have to grasp it?Or we should reject it and not communicate with it, because the impact it brings is too great.I think whether there are alien civilizations and whether there are aliens is still doubtful to human beings.Maybe there are alien civilizations, maybe there are aliens, and it is unlikely that they look the same as people on earth.Fear of the unknown world and things is human instinct.However, this new technological revolution driven by the Internet can be grasped by human beings, because the Internet civilization did not come from aliens, it was born from human civilization, and it is the inevitable result of human technological development.As long as you grasp it and learn it, you will not be eliminated.On the contrary, whoever resists the future, who does not grasp the future, who does not change his present, will definitely be eliminated by history!
Editor's note:

The predecessor of the Yunqi Conference was the Aliyun Developer Conference of Alibaba Group. In 2015, it was officially renamed as the "Yunqi Conference".In the past five years, China's Internet has developed from the era of grassroots webmasters to the era of surging cloud computing developers, and the scale of the conference has also expanded year by year from 2010 people in 3000. On October 2016, 10, the 13 Yunqi Conference with the theme of "Flying Evolution" opened as scheduled. Jack Ma attended the conference and delivered a speech.

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